This is the New Yorker Fiction Podcast from the New Yorker magazine.

I'm Deborah Treesman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

Each month we invite a writer to choose a story from the magazine's archives to read and discuss.

This month we're going to hear in these islands by Shirley Hazard,

which was published in The New Yorker in June of 1990.

In becoming a daughter, she had not relinquished personality.

She herself began now to be beautiful.

The gray hair in a coil, the thoughtful brow and client wrist.

The story was chosen by Lauren Grough, who's published three novels,

including most recently, Fates and Furies, which came out in 2015.

Hi, Lauren.

Hi.

So what is your history as a reader of Shirley Hazard?

How did you come to her work?

I have loved Shirley Hazard for many, many years.

The transdiviness is my favorite of her books,

and I think it's probably one of the great books of the 20th century.

She just doesn't get read as often as I believe she should be.

All of her books are really good, but the transdiviness just blows everything else out of the water.

What is it about the transdiviness?

She's so good at so many things.

I mean, I feel like she's the direct descendant of Henry James in some ways.

...